AI Promises to Make Everyone a Developer, But History Suggests Otherwise

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Artificial intelligence tools like Lovable.dev, v0, and Bolt.new have revived the long-standing promise that anyone can build software without formal coding skills. The idea that new technology will democratize programming is not new — similar claims were made with the arrival of COBOL in the 1950s and SQL-based fourth-generation languages in the 1970s and 80s. In each case, the barrier to software development did not disappear but instead shifted, giving rise to new categories of specialists rather than eliminating the need for technical expertise. AI-generated code can quickly produce a working interface or prototype, but the deeper challenges of production-ready software — reliability, scalability, and data integrity — remain largely hidden from view. The pattern suggests that AI may transform the developer's role once again, but is unlikely to render technical skills obsolete.

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